South Carolina executes first man in 13 years despite new evidence of innocence

Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 224 points –
South Carolina executes first man in 13 years despite new evidence of innocence
theguardian.com
23

Despite new evidence of innocence.

Conservatives/Republicans are psychopaths. Pure abject sadistic evil.

Not just new evidence. There was never any physical evidence linking him to the crime at all, according to the articles I've seen so far looking into it.

Execution shouldn't be an option. At least with life in prison you can release a person if you fucked up, with significant financial compensation for their time in prison. You can't un-execute a person. The state isn't competent enough to be given such power. Nobody is.

The purpose of the US legal system is not to provide justice. It's to terrorise poor people and minorities. So, it worked just fine here.

The "nobody is" is the most important part to me.

Like, society can argue all they want about choosing to execute convicted criminals of certain crimes. I'm not discussing that.

It's the "beyond all doubt" factor that matters most. I think we'd agree that for ~99.99999% of crimes it's really impossible to be sure.

If you can't be sure, then there's no reason to graduate to the next step of the decision "should we".

Giving the state the power to take life from its citizens is open to abuse when the wrong person gets into power. Not allowing it in the first place is how you go towards stopping that sort of thing.

We don't seem to have a problem giving the state power to take life from other countries' citizens, though. The only way you can stop that is if the other country is more powerful than yours.

But what is the cost of compensation for executing somebody that was likely innocent?

—Think about this. Life in prison is cheaper than an execution If the convict serves their entire sentence. –Is it still cheaper if the inmate has their conviction overturned and subsequently sues for restitution?

I genuinely don't know the answer to the latter question but nothing about sanctioned executions sits right with me.

South Carolina executed a man on death row on Friday, days after the key witness for the prosecution came forward to say he lied at trial and the state was putting to death an innocent man.

"New evidence" seems to be underselling the matter. How in the fuck could they justify not even granting a delay??

Black man in South Carolina is enough apparently

Clearly he should have been a black man in North Carolina and called himself a Nazi while chatting on porn site comments sections, as one does. I hear they make you the gubernatorial candidate in such situations.

I don't understand how you can convict someone based on the testimony of a person getting a plea deal for turning in another person.

The last thing the person getting the plea deal would want to do is turn over someone loyal enough to them to rob a place and shoot another person with.

Does anyone think this would have happened if the accused was the son of a wealthy white couple? How about if it was the police chief's son? Any senator's son?

Just saying. Testimony without hard evidence shouldn't be enough for criminal conviction, let alone a fucking execution.

I don’t understand how you can convict someone based on the testimony of a person getting a plea deal for turning in another person.

Please refer to North Carolina's skin color chart for further explanation.

The Rev Hillary Taylor, executive director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the flaws in Allah’s case were a reminder that “the death penalty is not given to the ‘worst of the worst’, it is given to the people who are least able to represent themselves in court”

Salient words.